


Have done, will do

by neverwhyonlywho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwhyonlywho/pseuds/neverwhyonlywho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's heard the words "traumatic brain injury" so often that they don't mean anything anymore. All she knows is this: there are things she can't remember, and there is a man that comes to visit her every day with a warm smile and fantastic hair, a man whose name doesn't suit him at all.<br/>(Prompt: "amnesia." Thanks Liz!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have done, will do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [philindas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philindas/gifts).



He visits her everyday, brings flowers on Wednesdays and Sundays.

The doctors have told him not to push her. He doesn’t bother reminding them that he knows this already.

She’s amicable enough, but the way she looks right through him makes it difficult to even come through the door sometimes. It’s an actual physical pain in his solitary human heart.

But still they talk. And still he is there, day in and day out.

She remembers everything after her accident. She remembers him, at least. Sort of.

She calls him John because he’s not supposed to push her.

She didn’t give up, he thinks. All those years and she never once gave up on him. Built a dimension cannon to find her way back to him. How could he give her any less?

But there is no dimension cannon for the human brain. No whispered word, no trick of the synapses to coax all those years back. He looks at her and feels so, so alone.

But she made a promise, and so did he.

A few times a week, they play a game like Pictionary. They started off drawing simple objects for each other: a chair, an ice cream cone, a stick-figure dog. As the weeks go on, the motor skills in her dominant hand improve enough to where she can sketch more complicated things: people she knows (“you know _all_ of them,” she says one day with a strange smile and tilt of her head), or flowers, which she is amazed to learn he can identify by species. He buys her a field guide and she keeps busy while he’s gone, figuring out how to best him. It’s good for her. She smiles more often after that. Shakes his hand when he leaves, occasionally lets it linger. He thinks about that for the rest of the day. He wonders if she does too.

One lazy Friday afternoon, her sketchpad is in her lap and she bites her lip thoughtfully. Makes a rough outline of something, but he can’t tell what from her bedside.

“John,” she begins, and then pauses, and starts again. “John, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah. Of course. What is it?”

Pauses again, finally flips the sketchpad around and passes it to him. “Not a quiz this time. And don’t laugh. Do you know what that is?”

He does. Oh, does he ever. Hard edges, square, windows in the front. A bulb on top. Not blue—she doesn’t have a blue pen—but shaded in where it would be.

His mouth has gone dry.

“Yes,” he says.

“I know you’ll laugh—but…” She gives him another one of her unsure smiles, more a need for reassurance than an offering of it. “I dream about that thing sometimes. Strange thing to dream about, big old blue box.”

“Yeah,” he manages to say, and he’s afraid he looks worse off than her. Listens for a second, doesn’t hear any nurses in the hallway. Murmurs to her. “That’s…that box is called a TARDIS, Rose.”

Her mouth drops open a bit. He notices her knuckles, growing quickly whiter, as she clutches at the sheet over her legs.

“Why do you know that?”

He manages a thin smile. “It’s a long story.”

“Wait, but no, nobody’s said anythin’ about this. John, I dream about it and I wake up crying. I need to know this!”

He hears a distant beeping from the nurse’s station and knows that it’s Rose’s pulse monitor going off. She looks genuinely scared, eyes wide, and he thinks he sees her lower lip tremble, just a little.

“John, if you know, you need to tell me, please—what’s a TARDIS? I—I _really_ just don’t understand, I—”

He hears the click of a nurse’s flats in the hallway. Incoming. He folds the sketchpad closed, handing it back to her. “Wardens are coming to kick me out, Rose. Tell you what. I’ll come back this evening, and we’ll talk. But you have to stay calm. There’s nothing to be scared of, I promise you.”

“I’m scared of the things I can’t remember,” she said with a humorless laugh. Her voice trembled. He flexed his hands on the arms of his chair, willing himself not to hug her breathless. She needed it—so did he. But right now, that would only frighten her further.

The nurse did ask him to leave. When he did, when he rose to say his goodbye, he couldn’t help it—did it without thinking, entirely skipped the handshake, bent down to kiss her forehead and nose her yellow hair for the first time in months. Soft. Still as soft as ever.

“I’ll be back tonight,” he repeated. “Until then, I’ll give you one word. Look it up in your book. Myosotis. Myosotis, got it?”

She blinked in surprise, repeated it back to him, and he nodded. Kissed her forehead again, not caring that the nurse coughed sternly when he did.

Rose’s pulse monitor was hopping. He risked a glance down at her eyes, and found her…found her startled, but not terrified. Just…confused and afraid. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He took a long walk. Through the streets of London, where they’d met, where they’d…

He caught a whiff of chips in the air and put on his first real grin of the day, pulling out his cell phone. Texting her.

_Save room for dessert. -JS_

No response. Probably still overwhelmed. That would be expected. It would have to be okay.

If she was in a bad way, he could give her chips, fabricate a history where they were coworkers, or friends who went out for lunch, who met over a phone box for some silly reason or other. Pull something out of thin air about acronym games.

And if she was in a good way, maybe, just maybe, he could tell her the truth.

It was past dark when he made it back to the hospital. The security guard knew him on sight, didn’t need to inspect his bag of chips—one of the benefits, he supposed, of being a frequent flyer around here.

There weren’t any nurses at the station when he entered Rose’s ward, so he went right on through. Her door was open—that was good. Still awake. Light was on, that was good. Still there. Still safe.

He steeled himself. Took a deep breath before he swung in, forcing a liveliness into his step that he didn’t really feel.

“Gooood eve—Rose?”

She looked up at him with bleary eyes, dabbed them dry. “I’m sorry—come in, I’m sorry.”

“No need to be. You all right?”

“Don’t think so,” she breathed, but she was smiling. Sort of. “Found your flower.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Casually placed the chips on her bed tray instead, focusing intensely on the arrangement of ketchup packets beside them. “Did you?”

And suddenly her hand was over his. Gentle and cool. Soft and so missed, and he froze, could only freeze.

“Forget-me-nots,” she said, and her voice caught. “Forget-me-nots and a blue police box that isn’t a police box, is it.”

“No.”

“And a key on a string around my neck, a key that fits in the lock but never opens it.”

“Rose…” This was all going far too fast for her. Maybe for him too. Impossible to control this. He tried to remove his hand; she wouldn’t let him. And slowly, impossibly, her thumb brushed over his knuckles in a tender, wordless question.

“Your name isn’t John, is it?”

Oh, Rose. His brilliant, clever girl, his Rose.

“No. No, it isn’t.”

“Dream about you too, oftentimes.” She laughed, though her voice was thick.

“Likewise.” He did meet her eyes then. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t even pretend to lie. And he couldn’t look away. She held his gaze, her thumb stroking back and forth, asking the same simple questions over and over: _have we, are we, will we_?

He brought her knuckles to his lips before he really knew what he was doing. Kissed them hard, held her hand hard.

_Have done, will do. Never stopped, never will.  
_

Maybe he said it aloud after all, because she made a sound in her throat like a whimper or a laugh or a cry or a sob. Somewhere in between.

“When I—that is, my—in my dream. I call you Doctor.” Her hand came up to rest against his cheek and he let it go, let her fingertips draw the line of his cheekbone, her thumb brush over his bottom lip. So long. It had been so long, and he had hoped so hard, and refused to let himself hope, and all of a sudden, six months after the fact, here she was.

Her eyes darted up again, still puffy from crying, but holding his gaze, brown eyes holding onto him and somehow, despite everything, not letting go.

“Doctor,” she said. “My Doctor.”

“Yes,” he said.

“But,” she murmured, her thumb over his lips, studying his face. “Doctor who?”

He wasn’t sure if he laughed or cried at that. Maybe it didn’t matter. What did matter was this: when he leaned forward and kissed his glorious, unstoppable Rose, she let him.


End file.
